"I'm Just a Kid" by Simple Plan

Simple Plan formed in Montreal in 1999, and "I'm Just a Kid" was the first thing most people heard from them. Written by Pierre Bouvier, Chuck Comeau, Sébastien Lefebvre, Jeff Stinco, and producer Arnold Lanni, it came out of Bouvier and Comeau's memories of high school, when every setback felt like, in Bouvier's words, "the end of the world." The band had wanted "Addicted" as the lead single, but a film opportunity changed the plan: the song landed on the soundtrack of the 2002 comedy The New Guy, and the video, directed by Smith N' Borin and shot mostly at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, folded in the movie's stars DJ Qualls and Eliza Dushku.

The single went to alternative radio on February 4, 2002, and the album No Pads, No Helmets...Just Balls followed on March 19 through Lava and Atlantic, eventually peaking at number 35 on the Billboard 200 and going double platinum in the United States. The single itself never registered on the US or UK singles charts; it spread through radio, the soundtrack, and the album's long tail instead, the kind of song everyone knew without anyone remembering buying it.

Then, eighteen years later, it became bigger than it had ever been. In April 2020, locked-down families on TikTok started re-creating old childhood photos, with the video cutting from the present-day restaging to the original snapshot the moment the chorus hit. More than three million people used the song in their videos. The band tweeted that it was "pretty incredible to watch a song we wrote almost 20 years ago bring people together and make them smile," then re-created a photo of their own from 2002. On May 26, 2020, the RIAA certified "I'm Just a Kid" platinum, a milestone the original release never reached, and it has since gone double platinum.